The Case of the Cockroach Calamity
by Ari Moriarty
Summary: Yosuke turns to Naoto for help when he faces a particularly terrifying and frankly disgusting problem. Based on a true story. WARNING: Story contains insects, both living and dead.
1. One - Hypothesis

**Author's Note: **This is short and just for fun, and for **Emd23**, who has been delightfully reading and reviewing my stories for so long. Unfortunately, the events in this story are based very heavily on what happened to me at work the other week, but at least this story has a happy ending. I had to write something about it to get if out of my system, and now it's done.

This piece is a standalone, and does not connect to or conflict with any of my other stories, although I'm sure you could fit it into the **Piecekeeping** timeline if you so desired. I hope you enjoy reading this more than I enjoyed living it!

WARNING: This story quite obviously contains cockroaches and creepy-crawlies. You have been warned. I wish I had been.

**The Case of The Cockroach Calamity**

**One – Hypothesis **

Naoto Shirogane strode into the Junes electronics department only an hour before closing on that fateful Monday evening, just in time to witness an unusual and slightly disturbing sight. As far as she could see, all of the other employees had gone home for the evening, and only Yosuke Hanamura remained. He was standing in the center of the room, wearing a deeply disgusted look on his face, and prodding at something on the floor with the handle of a well-used broom.

"What-?" began Naoto.

Before she had a chance to even complete the thought, however, something small and black suddenly skittered out from under the broom handle and made a break across the floor.

"Ah," murmured Naoto. "I see. You have cockroaches."

"Hey!" hissed Yosuke, glancing furtively over his shoulder into the still apparently empty recesses of Junes. "Not so loud! Do you have any idea what kind of shit I'd be in if people started talking about Junes having a pest control problem? Dad would be ruined…man, I don't want to move again. Just…just keep this to yourself, okay? Please?"

"Well," remarked Naoto helpfully, "it certainly could be worse. At least the insects have not yet appeared in the grocery department."

The defeated, desperate look on Yosuke's face told Naoto everything that she needed to know about that.

"They have, haven't they?" she asked. "Oh dear…that is a problem, I admit."

Yosuke groaned. "We're doomed, "he muttered. "Crap, what the hell am I gonna do now?"

"It seems to me," suggested Naoto, "that the most reasonable course of action would be to call an exterminator."

"How am I supposed to hide that from the customers?" demanded Yosuke, beginning to look really panicked. "There's no way they wouldn't find out if a bunch of guys with hoses and weird bags and stuff came tramping in during the middle of the lunch rush!"

Naoto, however, was used to dealing with panicky people. It was part of good detective's job to stay focused and aloof in the face of a dire situation like this one.

"I suggest," she informed him, "that you contact the exterminators and negotiate between you an appropriate time for the procedure. When they arrive, you should make a store-wide announcement over the loud-speakers, informing your customers that a routine health inspection is in the process of taking place, and that that you are sorry for the inconvenience, but that the doors to Junes will have to closed for the duration of an hour…or perhaps two." Pausing for a moment, Naoto frowned in thought and then shook her head, adding, "Perhaps it would be better to post signs a few days before the inspection. Then it would seem to be less of a surprise and more of a planned and thus innocuous event."

Another roach, or perhaps the same one scuttled suddenly towards them across the floor. Yosuke flinched, but Naoto was ready. She brought her foot down hard on the creature, then waited while it writhed and twisted in the throes of buggy death. Her stomach did turn a little as it struggled and wriggled, half-crushed and still living.

"I do not much like killing bugs," she admitted to Yosuke. "They always look so pathetic…it's a little, well…sad, really."

Yosuke was gazing at her as though she was the second coming of the Messiah. Then, shaking his head like he was trying to clear it, he shuffled his feet and cleared his throat.

"Well, uh, at least you're not afraid of them, anyway," he mumbled. "Not, uh, that anybody would be, right? I mean…they're just bugs."

The cockroach twitched violently, and Yosuke took an involuntary step back. Naoto raised an eyebrow at him.


	2. Two - Experiment

**Two – Experiment**

Three days later, on a quest for anything edible that wasn't steak or Chinese food, Naoto again found herself inside Junes, this time in the grocery department. The area was much more populated during the day, and it took her several minutes before she located Yosuke, who was in the process of dictating some of the store rules to a new and rather bored-looking high-school aged employee.

"Oh, hey, Naoto-kun!" called Yosuke, as Naoto approached. "Man, am I glad to see you."

Naoto blinked in surprise. "Are you?"

"Yeah, I really am." Glancing over at the young employee, Yosuke took a few steps away, and waited for the kid to go back to work before he leaned into Naoto and spoke to her in a conspiratorial whisper.

"We totally did that thing you recommended; you know, with the exterminators, and the overhead announcement, and everything. It worked great. The customers didn't suspect a thing."

Naoto nodded. "That's good," she said. "Isn't it?"

"Uh, well, yeah, that part's good." Yosuke still didn't look very happy. "Problem is, the bugs are back, or…maybe they never left. I don't know what those guys did, but whatever it is, it didn't work. Dad stepped on one this morning when he was unlocking the building, and I found one hiding in a pair of my rolled up socks last night."

"How did your socks get-?" began Naoto.

Yosuke shook his head and waved his hands frantically to cut her off. "Who cares?" he demanded. "Anyway, that's not the point! The point is, we still have bugs, and we're still screwed! Come on, Detective Prince, give me something! Anything! There's gotta be something you know that I don't."

Naoto was reasonably certain that there were several hundred things that she knew and which Yosuke didn't, about all manner of topics under the sun and moon. Unfortunately, she was aware that he was talking about roaches, and she did not know any tricks as to how to deal with them. This was not something that had ever been an issue in Naoto's incredibly clean, well-kept and well-swept home. Her parents had been meticulous; her grandfather had been and still was meticulous and pristine. Naoto had never properly encountered a pest control problem before, and had no clue as to how to solve one.

She did, however, have her deduction skills, and something about what Yosuke had said to her just wasn't adding up.

"The exterminators that you chose to call have an excellent reputation," she mused. "It seems…somehow strange that, after their visit, there would be no sign of any change. That is hardly a reasonable recipe for customer satisfaction."

"I'm just telling it like it is," mumbled Yosuke. "Hey I guess mistakes happen sometimes? Or, uh…"

"Which of your staff was working in the grocery department when the exterminators arrived?" asked Naoto.

"Oh, uh, I was," replied Yosuke." Yeah, I wanted to make sure that I handled it personally…Dad wanted that too, you know?"

"Of course." Naoto nodded. "Very sensible. And who was it escorted the exterminators out of the building again?"

"Yeah, that wasn't me." Yosuke sighed. "I really wanted to stick around, but Chie called, and she was freaking out about losing her notes for next week's exams, so I ended up rushing over there like, maybe five or six minutes after the exterminators got here. When I came back, they were already gone, so…nothing I can do to help you there. Actually, I think this guy was working out front when it happened. Hey, Keita!" Yosuke grabbed the younger employee by the shoulder and hauled him over to join them. "You were the one who let the exte…uh, I mean, those inspector guys out the other day, right?"

The employee looked surly and noncommittal. "I guess," he muttered.

Naoto frowned at him. "You guess?" she demanded. "Aren't you certain? Was it you or wasn't it?"

There must have been something about the look on Naoto's face that alarmed the employee. She'd often heard before, particularly from the high school girls that young men tended to find her 'intimidating.'

"Uh, well, yeah, I was there. I mean…who cares, right? What, was I not supposed to sign that paper? Nobody told me not to, and I didn't want Mr. Hanamura getting mad or nothing, so…I signed it."

Naoto and Yosuke exchanged a puzzled look.

"What paper?" asked Yosuke. "What the heck are you talking about?"

"Do you still have it?" added Naoto. "Please, let me see."

Under the pressure of their joint gazes, the employee fumbled around in his apron pocket for a moment before pulling out a crumbled but still legible half-sheet of paper. Yosuke snatched it out of his hand and held it up to see.

"Says here that we signed off on them leaving at one ten in the afternoon," he told Naoto. "That's…that's nuts. I mean, they showed up at five minutes after one o'clock in the first place, so…"

"So," finished Naoto, "the likelihood that they actually exterminated anything is extremely low."

Yosuke smacked the palm of his hand hard into his forehead. "What the hell…why? Does this seriously mean that I have to call them and bring them in again?"

Naoto really did feel sorry for him. It was always unpleasant to find that one's employees or associates weren't living up to one's expectations.

"Perhaps," she suggested mildly, "you might be able to claim that this was always intended as a multi-day inspection…"

"Sure," muttered Yosuke. "Yeah…whatever."


	3. Three - Solution

**Three – Solution**

Two days later, Naoto woke up to the sound of someone banging heavily on her front door. Bleary and half-dressed, she found something to wash her face with and hurried down the stairs, pulling open the door to find Yosuke standing on the threshold, wearing his Junes apron and a vaguely nauseous look on his face.

"Um," muttered Naoto sleepily. "You…I…what?"

Yosuke blinked at her. "Hey, wow, you almost look like a girl with those pajamas on."

Naoto managed to muster up the good grace to glare balefully at him, while crossing her hands self consciously over her chest "Am a girl," she mumbled. "What…are you doing here, Yosuke-senpai?"

The almost amused look that had been spreading across Yosuke's face suddenly dropped off, and he looked worried again. "Well, uh…h-hey," he stammered. "Look, the exterminators came yesterday, just like they said they would, and, um…."

"And what?" asked Naoto, stifling a yawn.

Suddenly, Yosuke was bowing very low before her, both hands clasped beseechingly in front of his chest. "Please, Naoto-kun," he begged her. "You have to help me. You have to. I…I really need you."

Unsure exactly what the emergency was, but never exactly comfortable turning down a friend in need, Naoto hurried back upstairs and got herself ready for her day. Once she was dressed again in her normal, masculine clothes, and once she had her hair obscured and her face as clean as it could be, she felt at least human enough to brave the wilderness of whatever wasteland Yosuke was preparing to drag her through.

As soon as she came back down the stairs, Yosuke started tugging her forcefully out the door and across the street. Still slightly stunned from her interrupted sleep, Naoto missed a few steps and stumbled into Yosuke several times, so that she was thoroughly embarrassed and quite a bit cranky by the time they reached the store.

"In here," said Yosuke, leading her through the doors into the grocery department. The lights were all still off, and as far as Naoto could tell, the store hours hadn't even begun yet.

"What am I doing here?" she asked him. "Was all of this really necessary?"

By way of an answer, Yosuke walked over and hit the light switch on the wall. Artificial light flooded into the room, illuminated racks and aisles full of delicious food products, a series of interesting and tastefully-created display signs, and the carcasses of hundreds of tiny cockroaches, all lying with their still-twitching legs in the air, in between the aisles.

"Oh," murmured Naoto. "Oh, that's…that is truly unfortunate."

"Yeah, tell me about it," sighed Yosuke.

"At least," added Naoto, doing her best to add the silver lining to the situation, "we are certain, this time, that the exterminators did do the job for to which we assigned them. That, at least, is encouraging."

Yosuke gazed around at the mess of tiny dead bugs, wide-eyed and beginning to look panicked again. "I have to get all of these out of here before the customers show up," he told her. "I have to. This is…this is a violation of soooo many health codes, holy crap."

"And," queried Naoto, "I am here because…?"

Yosuke turned to her in desperation, wringing her hands. "Because you're good with this kind of thing! You're all like, stoic and fearless and stuff! Come on, Naoto, please! Please? For me?"

They spent the next forty or so minutes sweeping up half-dead insects and depositing them into the dumpster outside. Possibly to keep her mind off of how unpleasant the task was, Naoto occupied her herself by reflecting on how truly miraculous it was that these tiny creatures were resilient enough to survive being stepped on, crushed, and poisoned, possibly more than once.

Once the grocery department was finally cleaned up, and there was no longer any trace of the dangerous health hazards in question, Yosuke and Naoto sat down on the edge of one the displays, and breathed a joint sigh of epic relief.

"Thank you," said Yosuke." Thank you, thank you thank you…I can't say it enough. Oh, hey, how about I take you out to get something to eat after this? You know, as a way of showing my gratitude. We can go to Aiya's, I think it's open t his early. What do you say?"

Naoto peered at him in startled surprise. "You are not…seriously suggesting that we go and try to keep food down after undergoing this rather nauseating ordeal, are you?"

Yosuke bit his lip. "Uh…okay, good point. So, then, how about a movie?"


End file.
